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Well, February is underway, ushered in by the ground hog seeing his shadow, an event signifying six more weeks of winter. February also signals the start of African American history month, an observance which sets aside 28 days every year for blacks to extol their icons, recognize their unsung heroes and bitch about the shadow cast by the racism that represents the ongoing "winter of their discontent".

White racism is indeed at the core of black discontent, even as it sometimes takes a back seat to black freedom. Poster Xeon spoke about blacks being free to do all the things they deem necessary to advance themselves, if they so choose. Conservative columnist, Shelby Steele, was a tad more cynical when he recently wrote about freedom catching blacks by surprise, leaving them off-balance and unable to cope with the loss of victim-hood, something similar to what the father of black history month, Carter Woodson, mused when declaring that if blacks couldn't find a back door to enter, they would rip out the wall and make one.

On a more personal level it strikes me as disturbingly ironic that it is not unusual to watch the local news where on any given night impeccable black news anchors enunciate the daily toll of black-on-black crime, offenses that run the gamut from children being caught in the crossfire of drive-bys, to elderly people being robbed and assaulted, to respectable hard-working folks having their autos carjacked. Any black Chicagoan choosing to explain this self-imposed genocide is free, however, to blame it on white racism. And there's nothing more stunning than having black intellectuals publicly debate the nature of racism. As is the case with perennial malcontent, Cornel West, accusing angst-ridden Ta-Nehisi Coates of being a whitewashed neo-liberal who has a masochistic fetish about the pain of systemic racism. White publishers pay these 2 big bucks to take advantage of their freedom to dissect white racism.

Meanwhile back at the circus, the Freak presiding over a bunch of clowns under the white house big top, cruises along, throwing the constitution under the bus. In the course of delivering a state of the union address full of half-truths and self-praise, Trump became the object of disdain to black law makers who took advantage of their freedom to refrain from applauding his drivel.

Troy reminds us that humans all belong to same big family, so when siblings exercise their freedom to accuse and abuse each other, this family obviously becomes dysfunctional. Welcome to America, land of the freed slaves.

Bottom line, what they say about freedom not being free can't be denied. Freedom is a double edged sword because it allows whites the freedom to enforce racism. What blacks really need is to be liberated from the freedom to be manipulated.

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@DelLOL. Good point. Obviously there are all manner of manipulative forces out there: the many branches of the media, self-serving black leaders, paternalistic white liberals, political parties with hidden agendas, religion and its greedy expectations, - all examples of the duplicity which blacks are free to resist, but which their minds aren't liberated enough to inconvenience or obligate themselves by doing what would be to their advantage in the long run. They are sometimes their own worst enemy. IMO

Semantics can involve the intricate use of language, a style i was free to employ in writing this post. I'm sure many will think i needed to be liberated from doing so.

What word, if any, would you have found more coherent than "manipulation"? Or do you totally disagree with my contention?